by Cara Charles
“I’m reading now, sir. I went from the last group to the first group like that.”
Little Joseph tries to snap his fingers.
“Goodness! That’s remarkable. I’m so proud of you. Keep at it. Be tenacious.”
“Keeping at it, right sir?”
“Exactly, right.”
“Thank you for teaching me, sir.”
Mrs. Roosevelt walked down the ramp.
“Did you hear, Franklin? He’s reading. He’s not even six! Our school is working splendidly.”
“They should name more schools after you, Mama. Come on Little Joe. When we’ve caught the criminals we’ve got three funny papers to read. The Times Funnies are first rate!”
Fala dropped the stick by FDR’s chair, as Little Joe wiped his sweaty forehead.
“Julia, dear? Excuse me Sheriff? Could you use some lemonade?”
“Don’t tire out the President now, Joe. I’ll serve in the Sun Porch sir. Save some room for Angel Food cake.”
“Yes ma’am. Are you worn out sir?”
“Heck no! Julia? I’m going to tire him out. My favorite thing in this world is your Mama’s Angel Food cake and reading with you, Little Joe.”
“Mine too sir. The Times have Dick Tracy. We love him don’t we sir?”
“Yes we do. Little Orphan Annie now she’s a scallywag, just like you.”
“Scallywag. Now there’s word,” Little Joe mimicked the President.
FDR laughed, and slapped his knee. “Ha! Do you suppose it means you?”
“She’s a little rascal like me and Spanky!”
“Like Spanky and I.”
“Yes, that’s right sir.”
“Ha! You’re a born politician! He’s going to be president one day!”
The President slapped his thigh, feigned injury to his thumb, wrapping his fingers around the thumb, hiding it.
“I say, this is the craziest thumb, Joe. I think it fell off again. Oops! Yes! Here it is in my hand.”
“Let me see,” Joseph leans in as FDR performs his famous, “my thumb is off’ trick.
FDR wiggles it. FDR moves the wiggly thumb away from the thumb stump on the other hand.
Joseph jumps back and shrieks, “Mercy! Mama! Come help! Come help the President.”
Julia runs into the yard and sees the President is playing, now greatly relieved it’s a joke.
FDR says to Little Joe, “Better say Alakazam. We must get this re-attached ASAP.”
“Alakazam!”
FDR screws his thumb on.
Little Joe laughs just like FDR, “Ha!”
“That’s a Republican trick. One won’t satisfy them. No siree! They’ll want them all.”
Little Joe imitated the President perfectly, “Scallywags! Every last one.”
FDR threw his head back, and laughed. He swung Little Joe up on his lap. FDR hugged the boy. Joseph hugged him back, giggling, and squirming as he gets a horse bite on his knee. FDR pulls the pillow behind his back, and puts it on Little Joe’s lap.
Fala jumps into Little Joe’s lap, right onto the pillow. Little Joe hugs Fala and Fala gives him a kiss.
FDR, with good upper body strength wheeled them up the ramp into the house, while Mrs. Roosevelt kissed their three foreheads.
Joseph’s dream morphed into Mrs. Roosevelt’s bedroom in 1962.
Mrs. Roosevelt is ill, lying in her bed, surrounded by prescription bottles, a basin, washcloth, and water carafe on her bedside table.
Julia smoothes Mrs. Roosevelt’s embroidered top sheet over her comforter.
Mrs. Roosevelt calls Joseph now a young man, to her side, reaching for his hand. She searches the room looking for someone.
“Joe? Where’s my nurse? I want you to meet her, Joe. I want you to get to know her, because you see? Your Mother and I have been keeping an important secret, a very long time,” her breathing quite labored, Mrs. Roosevelt was determined to have her say. “I’m soon leaving you behind, you must carry on Joe. Promise me? You’ll use all your influence and do everything in your power to help keep her…”
Julia wipes Mrs. Roosevelt’s upper lip while squeezing Mrs. Roosevelt’s other hand hard.
“Not now, Missus R. Not now. Our boy is an honorable man, raised with a loving hand. By you and the President. Our Joseph will honor all of our dreams for him. You know, he will.”
Joseph frowned, angry with his mother obviously interfering.
“Mama, please? She’s trying to say something to me. Yes ma’am, Mrs. Roosevelt. Whatever it is. I solemnly promise to do whatever needs to be done. You can set your heart at ease.”
There seemed to be a battle going on between the two old friends. Joseph’s promise seemed to relax Mrs. Roosevelt. She looked at Julia about to speak, again.
But Julia patted her hand. Julia repeated, “Not now. You rest. That would be best.”
Determined, Mrs. Roosevelt reached for Joseph, again. Joseph came to her side, kissed her on the forehead and, rearranged a curl of her long gray hair.
“I will. I love her,” he whispered close to her face.
Mrs. Roosevelt the champion of the voiceless squeezed his hand, and then patted it. She had released her burden to him. Their pact made. He had promised. She was tired, ready to rest. Mrs. Roosevelt nodded, closed her eyes lifted his hand and kissed it, as if to say good-bye.
Julia’s expression changed seeing her son Joe as a trusted man. A man of integrity.
“I know.” Mrs. Roosevelt said with a sigh.
JOSEPH’S DREAM FADES into another dream.
He’s an unseen spectator in the Roosevelt’s residence at Hyde Park years earlier.
A much younger Julia is cleaning up a spilled sugar bowl outside the President’s sitting room pushing Fala out of the sugar, brushing up what he’s tracking around.
“Fala. Get. Fala no. Go on now, Fala.”
Fala grabs her brush, thinking she’s playing he’s making her angry.
“Quit it, now. Shoo. Shoo, go on.”
Julia pats her pocket. There’s a dog cookie in it. She breaks off half, and throws it.
Far down the hall. He goes after it.
Julia hurries, the brush not cleaning up the sugar well, and keeps her eye on Fala.
He’s back all too soon, back before she can make progress. Fala bites at the brush, jumps out of the way of it hitting his feet, then decides his master will be more fun.
The door to the President’s private sitting room is ajar, enough for his nose to open the door. Fala pushes his way into the room. The door opens, hits the backstop, remains open half way.
General Eisenhower is alone with FDR, their backs to the door, a coffee service on the coffee table with tea sandwiches, minus its sugar bowl. Their voices reach her.
“…African woman seeks asylum here in the States,” General Eisenhower says.
Julia knew she was forbidden to listen. While slowly looking down the hall for a witness to her treason, no Secret Service agents are close by, no military assistant for the General. Struggling with her sense of right and wrong, Julia crawled toward the door, and spills more sugar in time to hear the President say…
“…Alcatraz on San Francisco Bay is the most secure and inaccessible facility...”
General Eisenhower interrupts saying, “Let me look into other places before we decide sir, but an African woman in Alcatraz? The press would get wind of it and have a field day.”
“They’d speculate all the wildest things. It’s too remote. We do need security and scientific accessibility. And we can’t let J. Edgar in on this. You know what he’d do if he knew we have a Biological Eve on our shores. Seems utterly impossible, doesn’t it?” FDR said.
“Yes, sir. He’s a rogue and a very strange man with his own agenda. Let’s never, ever include him. Please, Mr. President. I’m anxious for you to meet her. She impressed Professor Castellucci, the archaeologist who impressed Rommel enough for him to send me this letter. I believe Rommel chose to pay the ultimate
price to protect his family, his staff and our African Eve.”
Julia watches the General hand over a letter to FDR. Leaving her mess, Julia crawls away, then runs on her tiptoes to Mrs. Roosevelt’s suite, opens the door, but doesn’t step in, not wanting to leave the door to watch the General.
“Pssst! Missus R. Come quick.”
Julia motions for her to hurry.
“What on Earth?” Mrs. Roosevelt moves quickly to the door.
“I was cleaning the sugar the Rascal spilled, when I heard the General and the President talking about Eve. Eve, Missus! The General’s got her. They’re going to put her in Alcatraz.”
“Eve, they said. You’re absolutely sure?”
“Come listen for yourself, ‘Eve, an African woman,’ they said.”
On tiptoe Julia pulls Mrs. Roosevelt to the sitting room door. They listen, keeping out of sight.
Eleanor watches FDR read a multiple page letter.
FDR is saying, “…So the famous Dr. Marino Castellucci swore to Rommel. He thought she was an ancient living legend of the Southern Semitic area? How fantastic is that?”
Ike nodded.
The two women look at each other. Their eyes widen.
Fala comes to the door, vigorously wags his tail, almost giving them away.
Julia coaxes him out the door, then throws the half cookie far down the hall.
Fala races to get it, chews it where it landed. He sees his ball, jumps on it and races into the room, bumping the door fully open.
Julia and Mrs. Roosevelt jump away from the doorway.
The President still reading the letter, throws the ball for Fala, never noticing them.
“Marino said he got older, her parents got older, she stayed young. I know the man. He’s not a dreamer. Quite the contrary, something about her mystified, and intrigued him.”
Mrs. Roosevelt makes Julia run for the kitchen.
Mrs. Roosevelt then strides into the sitting room surprising the President and General Eisenhower, who respectfully stands up.
“Hello, General. Let’s talk about our newest refugee, Franklin.”
“My God, Eleanor!” FDR pounds his chair. “How long were you standing out there?”
Mrs. Roosevelt looks defiantly at her husband, but turns a smiling face toward Ike. Their battle of wills is out in the open.
Flushed anger rises on the neck of the President.
General Eisenhower seems relieved. His body language relaxes, and he openly sighs, smiling at the Free World’s most passionate rights crusader. Ike’s eager for her input. He needs an ally.
While keeping eye contact with Ike, Mrs. Roosevelt snatches the letter out of FDR’s hand.
“Franklin. What matters is that we do the right thing. In this era of man’s inhumanity to man in the guise of politics, you’d dare consider anything less? Alcatraz, indeed!”
A naked truth hangs in the air. Her husband has not learned the lesson of the war.
Mrs. Roosevelt now turns to Ike.
Ike smiles up at her, ready to receive her brilliant logic.
She returns his smile, his eyes welcoming and eager, she’s sensing an ally in him.
“Since the war, Franklin thinks only in terms of what is best strategically which has been brilliant, but now sadly, almost never with his heart. The burden of the war and the home political climate has affected his compassion. He’s a tired President, General. It has been my duty to keep him and this country as humane as I possibly can, and let me clarify this General… when I’m aware there is a problem. He’s kept too many things from me, in the name of politics but not this time. Providence has intervened. When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it? This country, like the entire world sadly, is divided by those who have a heart and those who don’t. The less fortunate are always fighting a war against those who have everything and yet are void of compassion, and yet their proudest possession is their dead heart. For the sake of what makes us humane General Eisenhower, we must never ever let anyone else outside this room, meaning the Vice President, J. Edgar or the Republicans, simply anyone else, know about her. Since you’ve seen the camps, you need not speculate on what would happen to her. What genuine asylum could we ever possibly offer, if J. Edgar and the Republicans were involved in any decision making regarding this delicate, sensitive, and historical matter?”
As General Eisenhower nods in agreement, Mrs. Roosevelt turns her eyes back to her husband.
She inhales to soften her tone, not really wanting to rein in her intense disappointment in FDR, but she knows her husband. The political pressure he’d gotten lately because of her influence well, she knew his patience was wearing thin. She would use her power to force him to do the right thing. They had drifted far apart. She would continue to push him in the right direction by saying, ‘it was right for the investment in democracy.’
“You know this, dear. We have to begin to be humane to all peoples of this Earth, Franklin. We are just people. The same the world over. The shameful failure of the Wagner-Rogers bill, not allowing 20,000 Jewish children to come here for safety? Who in God’s name are we, if we won’t save a child? And I was just told that in 1939, a German ocean liner with kind Captain Gustav Schroeder of the MS St. Louis, and his boatload of desperate and terrified European Jews, men, women, and children arrived in Havana, but were not allowed to disembark. They were turned away. When they tried to dock in Miami, I heard you, Franklin, you were persuaded to have the Coast Guard follow them so they wouldn’t attempt any landing, anywhere, in any of our ports! My God, the shame of it! Onto Canada they went and they were sent back from there, too. God knows what happened to them, Franklin. Then there was another European Jewish refugee boat you refused and thankfully they luckily ended up in Venezuela. Franklin? How many boatloads of desperate people did you order turned away, all without my knowledge, crushing their certainty of hope, the certainty of survival and sanctuary, perhaps to die, especially the children! How could you love them any less than your own, but you did! Turned away by you, when you and the idea of this democracy were their only hope? I’ve abhorred your assimilation ideas for decades. You extinguished Liberty’s beacon of freedom Franklin, when you sullied and betrayed this country’s mission. What if it were the Gentiles who were made to suffer throughout history? You’ll rescue art but not Jews? And what you did to the Japanese Americans, I’ll never forgive you of this either, Franklin. You’re a racist. I’m sure they will never forgive you or forget, and they voted for you in droves, and yet not one betrayed their country. Not a single one! Reflect man on how all Americans of color and different religions have proven themselves! What more could you possibly want from them? Your final days as President are few and history is long. You will not escape the scrutiny of history. As long as I have the opportunity to intervene and the power to persuade you to do the right thing in this circumstance, we will do the right thing! Especially for all of our own citizens and anyone crying for help, do you hear me! And General!? The safest place for Eve is here with me, until other well-planned arrangements with contingency plans can be made by you General, and your most trusted resources. The fewer involved the better. I know you’ll agree. Are we in agreement?”
“Do you see what I have to put up with, General Eisenhower?”
FDR smiled at her.
Mrs. Roosevelt smiled at FDR. She exhaled, quite relieved, as she waited for Ike’s reply.
“If I may be frank Mr. President,” General Eisenhower said looking directly into his Commander in Chief’s eyes, “her plan is the simplest, the safest, the most realistic, efficient and the best solution we’ve come up with so far, sir. We really don’t have a facility for her, unless you want her to be a prisoner, which is not why she came to us in the first place. She expects to live the ideal of a free person in this democratic free country. She could have trusted the Russians and surely ended up a lab rat in a Siberian prison. Believe me. I’ve wracked my brain around thi
s one. We owe her our best effort. My first instinct was to take her back home to her Desert homeland. If she had felt safe there, that is where she would have gone, before making an effort to seek me out. She said she was no longer safe there. The Germans would always be looking for her there as they had long before the war, she told me. So, Mr. President I must side with your most precious and logical political partner and your number one ally sir. Your wife. I know they would both agree.”
“Both?” FDR said.
“Ivan Kimirov, a Russian soldier acting officially as an interpreter, fell in love with General Keitel’s executive secretary, a Winifred Schmidt. She made Kimirov promise to bring Herta to me, wherever I was. I’ve given them both, asylum. Kimirov can be trusted.”
“She was an extraordinary young woman, a true heroine. So you’re on Eleanor’s side?”
“You’re the President, sir. You have a choice, to follow your head or your heart. If I may sir, Mrs. Roosevelt is the conscience of the caring people of America. Wait until the full measure of the atrocities are among us. We have to begin to restore the best in us with Herta, our extraordinary guest. She trusted what she believed America stands for to be safe among us. Your wife sir is your strongest and most trusted ally. She is our national treasure, an example of the best of us and within us. Mrs. Roosevelt would build Utopia if we men could stop our petty puffery, step aside and just let her.”
“Point well taken, Ike. I owe being re-elected to her alone. She’s as much President as I am. Some times more so.”
“Thank you General. Thank you dear. So nice to hear you say that, after all we’ve been through. I didn’t know you felt that way, General. You should hear what his advisors call me, but I’ve grown a thick skin. I have spent many years of my life in opposition. I rather like the role,” Mrs. Roosevelt said with amusement in her voice.
“Always have admired you, ma’am. I’m in complete agreement. No one must ever know. They’ll see her as a wallet, like they measure everything else. “
Mrs. Roosevelt kissed her husband on his forehead. “Thank you for seeing the wisdom in this strategy Franklin. We gain strength, courage, and confidence by each experience when we stop to look fear in the face. Your words darling, ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ We must do that which we think we cannot. Tell me General, are you going to run for President? Before you answer, consider this. You alone and a few intellectual humanitarians you could implicitly trust who would be as devoted as we are right now could protect our newest treasure for another eight years. Think, General. Where we as a country, and you as our President, could be in another ten years time. I’d vote for you.”